Self and Silence
by Assimbya
Summary: Silence, especially of women, is a common theme in fairy tales. Four reinterpertations of fairy tales having to do with female silence, both as a choice and as an enforced condition.


Genevieve had soft golden hair, cornflower blue eyes, and a smile that could cause any Prince or King in nearly any Kingdom to want her for a bride. But Genevieve didn't want that life. She had seen her mother shed tears of blood over her embroidery, mourning her lost older brothers, and she remembered her brothers as they had been when she was still a young child, a rowdy and affectionate group who always tried to include her in their games. She remembered their disappearance, a flock of black birds fleeing the palace with tortured sounds coming from their beaks, sounds which seemed all too much like human screams.

She knew that her destiny lay with them, if it lay anywhere, and she would go out and find them when she could, not to heal her mother's broken heart of to bring a smile to her father's face, but so that she might be whole and content once again, as she could only be with them.

And so, when she reached her seventeenth birthday, she went out into the woods, bringing no supplies, trusting to the same forest that had swallowed her brothers whole for her sustenance.

A dream led her to them, and she sleepwalked to a cave where she was surrounded by black feathers, beaks, and scaly legs. She awoke then, but not before the glowing form of her eldest brother appeared to her in the dream, and told her the only way she could make her brothers whole again, and thus win their everlasting love; she must sew thistle shirts for all seven of them, and, in the span of time that it took to do that, she must never utter a word.

Genevieve awoke with the words, "Yes, I will, I promise," on her lips, and the seven ravens around her hopped up and down in joy, preening her with their beaks in the only expression of gratitude that they had. She smiled, content for that moment to be among them again, and not caring that she had sworn her voice away for however long it would take her to sew seven shirt of thistles – which could be quite a long time, as she had never had her mother's talent for sewing. The sacrifice of her voice didn't matter, not in this world of wordless compassion.

She spent her days after that in the cave, lost in incomplete contentment. Her brothers the ravens came to her, and brought her insects to eat (which she swallowed eagerly, wanting to do anything be like them), a needle of bone to sew with, and great heaps of thistles (which stung her fingers with every stitch, but she never uttered a single cry of pain). She smiled at them whenever they came to give her these gifts, and ran her fingers over the feathers on the tops of their heads affectionately. Whenever they left feathers there, she braided them into her hair or into the ever increasing holes in her dress, hoping perhaps that if she did that enough, she would become a raven like them, and so their attempt to become human again would be unnecessary.

Things would perhaps have stayed like that, had Genevieve not longed to see the sunlight. She left the cave (only for a moment, just a moment!) and began to walk along a pretty stream she saw soon after doing so. She walked with something of skip in her step, because she had already finished the second of the seven shirts in only a few days, and perhaps, if she worked at that speed, her fingers would not become forever scarred by the thistles. She smiled, laughed, twirled a little. After all, she was still a child.

But it was an unlucky moment, for the twirling of her tattered skirts caught the eye of a King who was in the forest hunting. He saw her, bedecked in shining black raven feathers, and saw her as something he had never seen before. A novelty. But a novelty with the sort of beauty, the sort of smile that he was used to being attracted to, only in a purer form, without jeweled gowns and pearl necklaces. He strode over to her confidently, but with a question in his eyes. "What sort of sorceress are you, maiden? Tell me your name, and give me some power over you in return for the power your spell has had over me?"

Genevieve kept her lips closed to prevent the name from escaping them. It was not worth sacrificing her brothers for this man. He looked perplexed but then smiled. "You seek to bewitch me further with beguiling silence. Well, it has worked. From first catching a glimpse of you, I have wanted nothing more than to make you my Queen." Almost as an aside, he told her, his tone changing, "I have great need of a wife, and the women of the palace bore me with their monotony," then he continued in the same tone that he had used earlier, "I will bring you to my palace, sorceress, as I know you must desire, and you will rule beside me." He paused, and, when she said nothing in reply, spoke again, "You need not be silent any longer, sorceress. You have succeeded with me. You may gloat as you like."

She closed her eyes, hoping that this was all some bizarre hallucination, and that she would soon awake to one of her brothers prodding her gently with his beak, but instead she heard the King's voice, and his laughter. "A sorceress who follows the teachings of the bible! How remarkable! I thought that it was impossible to find a woman who stays silent, as God instructed women to do, but here she is, in the forest! And you seem to freely offer what it is men desire most, another rare quality in a woman. I shall take your offering and bring you gladly home with me, giving you a crown and a place in my bed."

With that, he kissed her, and then brought her back with him. She was too shocked to fight, and soon her mind turned to how she was to get thistles while in the palace of this King.

She wept, though, when maids took the raven feathers from her hair, and helped her out of the tattered dress which had more of the feathers woven into it. They put her in clothes even more beautiful than those she had worn as a Princess in her father's court, but none of her jewels seemed to have the shine of her brothers' feathers. And as a heavy crown was placed upon her head, she felt the eyes of a tall, silver haired woman upon her, a woman who took the King aside and spoke to him in soft and threatening words.

After the ceremony, during which she moved like a puppet, unsure even of what she was doing, the King (her husband? She had never wanted a husband) brought her to a room with a bed, larger than hers in her father's home, in the center of it. He brought her to that bed and laid her down in it and with rough fingers unfastened the many layers of heavy clothing that the maids had dressed her in. She was glad to be rid of them, but not by the hands of this strange man who had claimed her as a bride. She lay as still as stone.

She never gave her consent, nor did her ask for it. He took silence to mean compliance and explored her body hungrily, never looking at her terrified eyes. When he was done with Genevieve he fell asleep beside her, snoring. She removed herself from him and went to the window. A pile of thistles had been left there, along with one, shining black feather. She touched first the feather to her lips, and then the thistles. The thistles left her lips stinging, but they already had been doing so from the King's kisses.

Genevieve spent every free moment in the days that followed stitching the shirts for her brothers from the thistles they left her. But she didn't have many free moments, as the eyes of the King's mother watching her suspiciously all through the day, and the King wanted her in his bed all night. She embroidered common things while the King's mother watched, and sometimes she found herself weeping tears of blood over them.

Things could have gone on like _that _until she finished the shirts (though that would perhaps have been years), but, after a few months, her belly began to round, and she had the horrible, awful thought that she might be bearing a child. After all, she was married, though she had never spoken the wedding vows. The King seemed exceptionally happy with her, and his mother glared at her with a resentment far greater than that which she normally showed Genevieve.

And, in nine months, she gave birth to a child. They were nine months of pain and terror, as things that she didn't understand in the least happened to her body. And in those months she was closely watched, and had no opportunity to sew the shirts. It ended with a messy and painful operation after which a baby was placed in her arms, a little crying thing that she couldn't find it in herself to love. She handed it back to the King's mother, who looked at her with undisguised disgust for the first time.

The King insisted that she sleep with the child in her arms, and so she did, though she despised the necessity of doing so. But when she awoke the next morning, she found that she was holding a pig rather than the child she had given birth to. Somehow, to her, there seemed to be little difference, and the whole thing did not bother her overmuch. However, it seemed to bother the King and his mother a great deal, and she had to sit in the room with them doing embroidery as they talked angrily about something. She didn't pay any attention to what they said.

Things repeated after that, as they always do in these sorts of tales, though the two children she gave birth to afterwards were turned into a dog and cat rather than a pig. Genevieve didn't let any of it bother her, except for the fact that it remained difficult for her to find time to sew the shirts. But the rest of the court didn't seem to think so, and, after the third child was turned into an animal, she was dragged out of the King's bed and accused of witchcraft. They would bring her to prison, the rough handed men who accused her said, and then they would decide her fate. All she could do was grab for her half finished thistle shirts and follow them.

She would be burned at the stake. That was what they told her after a week spent in the damp prison, a week that she relished because she could spend it constantly sewing the thistle shirts. When they told her, she wasn't so much scared of being burned at the stake as she was of not finishing the shirts. As long as she finished the thistle shirts everything would turn out all right, she knew that. She would be with her brothers again. They would save her from the fire and bring her back to the cave where they had all lived before this terrible mistake.

Genevieve almost didn't finish them. In fact, she didn't _really _finish them; one sleeve on the final shirt was undone even as she frantically stitched while being led in a wagon to the stake, which was silhouetted dark against the morning sky. But the ravens came, and she threw the shirts upon them, disregarding the missing sleeve, and they were transformed instantly into handsome youths, far older than they had been when she last saw them as humans. She didn't see any of her brothers in them, and to her they seemed almost indistinguishable from the King (aside from the last, who still had one arm of raven feathers). The second oldest ran away for a moment and brought back three little children, two boys and a girl, telling the King that they were his children with Genevieve, who had been stolen away by the King's mother. And the brothers and the King and the children all embraced, full of smiles and joyful words. And Genevieve, now freed from her task, wanted to say, _No, this isn't what I wanted, it never was,_ But when she tried, she found that she had forgotten how to speak.


End file.
